Defects DO NOT drop off after a year? In fact never?!

[conspecmaterials]

So I had to cancel 2 sales last year when the shortages hit my industry, as walk-in customers bought up the inventory at our retail location and there was not enough material to fulfill the 2 ebay orders.  That was Jan-2022 of LAST YEAR, and after reading the forums here some folks stated it was 3 months, and some stated up to one year for those defects to drop off and not effect your metrics.  Well I asked ebay via email since I can never reach live chat, and they stated they cannot be removed because they were not addressed in the first 90 days? !! So now is our account permanently locked at the crappy 20% punishment fee?  If so, are we better off just creating a new account and starting from scratch??  I still get a WARNING notice every month that the account is "Below Standard" but how can we get it back up to normal if we are punished indefinitely for a few mistakes a year ago? 

[pargran3]

There is more going on with your account than two canceled orders over a year ago. Yes, an out of stock cancellation does drop off after a year. But two of those would not put you below standard or increase your fees to 20%. 

You are not telling the whole story.

[ebooksdiva]

I had one sale that I cancelled for being out of stock it dropped of my seller dashboard after a year and no longer affects my account. So there must be other factors in play here regarding your issue. You need to look closer at your seller dashboard. 

There are other metrics that will get your seller rating to be below standard not just for being OOS

Transaction defect rate (Out of Stock) Fix- don't sell items that are out of stock.
Late shipment rate   Fix- ship on time or change your handling time.
Cases closed without seller resolution Fix- Resolve cases with ebay stepping in
Tracking uploaded on time and validated Fix- ship on time.

[1tuna · Accepted solution]

just guessing here but maybe you need to wait until the first quarter of the year is over

January of 2022 was in the first quarter and ebay has ways of measuring things that do not always follow logic

@conspecmaterials 

[ebooksdiva]

Tried to edit but time ran out 

Cases closed without seller resolution Fix- Resolve cases without ebay stepping in

[luckythewinner]

 some folks stated it was 3 months, and some stated up to one year for those defects to drop off and not effect your metrics. 

The defects drop off your metrics once they are outside the evaluation period for your metrics, and your new metrics take effect on the 1st of the month following your evaluation. So simply looking at the "last 12 months" is not enough.

If you were evaluated on Feb 15th for the period covering Feb 1, 2022 to Jan 31, 2023, your new  metrics would not take effect until March 1, 2023. And the metrics from your January evaluation would be in effect until then, and those January metrics would include the Jan 22, 2022 defects.

Well I asked ebay via email since I can never reach live chat, and they stated they cannot be removed because they were not addressed in the first 90 days?

When a defect fall out of the 12 month evaluation period, it is not "removed", it simply does not apply. The answer you got from customer support was correct about removal of defects. They are never removed. 

I still get a WARNING notice every month that the account is "Below Standard" but how can we get it back up to normal if we are punished indefinitely for a few mistakes a year ago? 

You are not punished indefinitely, and it takes more than two defects to put you below standard. What else are you not telling us?